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Nine children, including a five-year-old boy, were shot outside a gas station in Columbus, Georgia, where the mayor says the community must “take back our youth.”
- All nine victims were involved in a shooting that occurred shortly after 10 p.m. Friday night at a local Shell gas station.
- None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries and four have so far been released from the hospital.
- Mayor Skip Henderson said he was tired of ‘seeing people… draw a gun’ after a minor dispute, said the community must ‘take our youth back’
Nine children under the age of 18 were shot outside a gas station in Columbus, Georgia, on Friday night.
The shooting happened just after 10 p.m. Friday night outside a Shell gas station on Warm Springs Road.
The victims were between the ages of 5 and 17 and were made up of seven men and two women.
At a news conference Saturday, Police Chief Freddie Blackmon said the case remains under investigation, but the shooting was likely the result of an altercation that began at a nearby party and spread to the gas station.
Columbus, Georgia Police Chief Freddie Blackmon briefed reporters Saturday about the shooting that left nine injured, including a 5-year-old child, that occurred the night before.
The Shell gas station on Warm Springs Road in Columbus, Georgia, where the shooting occurred. The police chief said the shooting likely spilled over from a nearby party where an altercation had broken out.
The 5-year-old victim had not been part of the group of partygoers, but was instead a bystander victim of the fight.
None of the victims had life-threatening injuries and four have so far been released from the hospital.
As of Saturday afternoon, the chief said, no arrests have been made.
At the press conference, Blackmon said, “The wave of gun violence involving our youth is affecting communities across the country.”
‘While Columbus is not immune to these incidents, I want to assure the citizens that the men and women of CPD are working tirelessly to get violent criminals off our streets.
‘It takes the effort of our entire community to combat gun violence in our city… The entire town has a responsibility because incidents like this affect us all.’
Columbus Mayor Skip Henderson briefly took the podium to say that he is “tired of seeing people, when they have a disagreement or an argument, or even a fist fight, they think they have to pull out a gun and use force lethal”. ‘
He lamented the “particularly troubling” incident as part of the nation’s youth crisis.
The country and its community, he said, suffers from a “lack of maturity or mental acuity” in our youth.
“We have to find a way as a community to win back our youth,” he added, also speaking of investing heavily in programs that present potentially troublesome youth with productive outlets for their energy.
Although no one died Friday, Henderson said, the incident “changed so many lives … of those children and those who care for them.”
Police are still actively investigating the incident, which took place in the eastern section of the city, a mostly residential area.
The city’s mayor, Skip Henderson, said the shooting was disturbing due to the young age of the victims. He added that the country is in crisis when it comes to youth and “we have to find a way as a community to win them back.”
There were nine victims, seven men and three women, the youngest of whom was only five years old. None of them suffered fatal injuries and at least four were released from the hospital on Saturday afternoon.
Bordering the western end of the state, Columbus is the second largest city in Georgia.
According to the 2020 census, the city about 100 miles southwest of Atlanta has a population of about 207,000.
The Shell station where the shooting took place is located in the eastern part of the city, near the airport, which is relatively residential.
The demographic breakdown of the city is a plurality of 46.3 percent white residents and 45.5 percent black composition. Hispanics comprise less than 6.5 percent of the population and Asians make up 2.2 percent of residents.